Maggie Joel

Maggie Joel is a British-born writer who grew up in a small commuter town in southeast England. She studied marketing and advertising in Southampton, on England’s south coast, and worked for a number of years in the marketing and events industry in London before moving to Australia in the early Nineties. She completed a Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies) and a Master of Arts (Literary Theory and Creative Writing) both at Sydney’s Macquarie University and became an Australian citizen in 1998.

Maggie has been writing fiction and non-fiction since the mid-1990s and her short stories have been widely published in Southerly, Westerly, Island, Overland and Canberra Arts Review, and broadcast on ABC radio. Her first novel, The Past and Other Lies, was published to critical acclaim in Australia and New Zealand by Murdoch Books in April 2009 and in the US by Felony & Mayhem Press in 2013 and was chosen as the Sydney Morning Herald’s 'Pick of the Week'. Her second novel, The Second-Last Woman in England, was published by Murdoch Books in Australia and New Zealand in 2010, in the US in 2011 and in the UK by Constable & Robinson in 2013. This book was also selected as the Sydney Morning Herald’s 'Pick of the Week' and was awarded the 2011 Fellowship of Australian Writers' Christina Stead Award for Fiction. Maggie's third novel, Half the World in Winter, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in October 2014.

Maggie currently lives in Sydney and works as the operations manager at a federal government agency.

In 1881 in London, everything changes for the wealthy Jarmyn family. The misfortunes on the railway the family had built echoes the shocking death of nine-year-old Sofia Jarmyn. And at the heart of this family, a terrible secret is tearing their lives apart.